


come back with gravity

by frutescence



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Rise of Kyoshi, The Shadow of Kyoshi
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Concussions, F/F, Family, Hurt/Comfort, POV Third Person, Panic Attacks, Paralysis, Parent Death, Poisoning, Rangi POV, Rangi-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27361453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frutescence/pseuds/frutescence
Summary: "We are protectors," her father used to say in his slow, eastern Fire Nation dialect as he smoothed back the loose strands of Rangi’s bun after she spent too long running around the volcanic beaches of her home island. "It is our duty, our honor, to protect those that cannot protect themselves.""But why can’t they protect themselves?" Rangi asked once, sitting on his lap on the rocky cliffs near their home.Her father looked at her and laughed as he took her hands in his. His laugher was a deep, warm sound. Safe. "Sometimes, little one, it’s better to not do everything alone."[Or: When the shirshu spit darts render her unconscious, Rangi remembers her father. A story about Rangi's capture, prison break, and reunion.]
Relationships: Junsik & Rangi (Avatar), Kyoshi/Rangi (Avatar)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 84





	come back with gravity

**Author's Note:**

> content warning: panic attacks, canon parent death, concussion, nausea, description of burn, possible torture 
> 
> (description in end notes)

The dart hits Rangi first.

It sinks into the back of her neck, in the inch of space between her collar and her hair. She pulls hard on Lek’s elbow as her knees hit the ground, taking him down with her.

She’s only able to hold herself on her knees for a moment until her legs give out entirely and she falls face down on the ground.

Something is happening to Lek. She can’t see and she tries to yell out but she can’t, and she can’t move to help him even though every muscle in her body is screaming.

_Kyoshi._

The Academy had an entire module dedicated to resisting poisoning, on how to use the inner flame to push toxins out of the body. She tries to remember but is only drawing a blank, and no amount of training had prepared her for this.

She hears something hit the ground, but it sounds far away, like it’s happening in another room instead of right next to her.

_Kyoshi._

The gravel beneath her bites harshly into her face as her vision grays at the edges.

Her breath is coming quickly. She tries to remember the breathing exercises she used to do with her father, during the late-night panic attacks that feel so, so, long ago, _inhale-two-three-four-exhale-two-three-four_ but the panic only inches further and further up her throat.

She thinks Lek is choking next to her. She wants to reach for him, turn him on his side, do _anything_ to help him because in a twisted, painful way, Lek reminds Rangi of Yun and she cannot lose anyone else.

_Where’s Kyoshi?_

She registers hands grabbing at her shoulders. The world goes black around her.

* * *

Rangi remembers her father’s hands the most.

She remembers how gentle they were, the hands that would run down her back when she woke up having a panic attack as her father whispered breathing exercises in her ear, _inhale-two-three-four-exhale-two-three-four,_ the hands that would braid her hair in the mornings and the hands that wiped her tears when she got sticky sap stuck in her hair as a child and her father had to cut it out with a pair of kitchen shears.

When she was little, her father’s hands always seemed so big. Like he could fit the entire world and sun and stars in the palms of his hands if he tried.

 _We are protectors_ , her father used to say in his slow, eastern Fire Nation dialect as he smoothed back the wild, loose strands of Rangi’s bun after she spent too long running around the volcanic beaches of her home island. _It is our duty, our honor, to protect those that cannot protect themselves._

 _But why can’t they protect themselves?_ Rangi asked once, sitting in his lap on the rocky cliffs near their home.

Her father looked at her and laughed as he took her hands in his. His laugher was a deep, warm sound. Safe. _Sometimes, little one, it’s better to not do everything alone._

Rangi’s father had been in the army, once. So had her mother, before she quit to teach at the Academy. Her father had quit when Rangi was born. She remembers their quiet mornings where Rangi rose with the sun and her father rose with Rangi. They would eat congee around their table or her father showing him the plants in his garden when the days her mother spent in the Caldera turned into weeks and it was just two of them.

She asked him once why he had quit, why he would give up the army, something he and his mother loved so proudly and so dearly, and he held her tiny hands in his much larger ones and said _I did it for you and your mother, of course._

When Rangi was six, missing her mother terribly and wishing someone could braid her hair, her father spent hours practicing until he could braid her hair perfectly.

His fingers moved gently and precisely through the ribbons of her inky black hair, doing the movements slowly as Rangi suppressed a giggle and he murmured under his breath, _divide into thirds from the top of her head, left under to center_. His patience never wavered until Rangi’s braid was perfect, until he could do it just as quickly and precisely as her mother because _what kind of a father am I if I can’t even do your hair, little one?_

Her father’s hand was the perfect height for her to slip hers into, when they would take evening walks along the volcanic shore that felt so far away from the rest of the world.

* * *

When she comes to, Rangi doesn’t know how much time has passed. She keeps her eyes closed and uses her other senses to assess her surroundings.

Her head is swimming dangerously. She can’t tell if it’s from the dart or from when she hit the ground.

She can feel Agni’s rays on her face. She must be outside. She’s propped up against something. She’s still wearing all of her armor.

Her hands and feet are encased in stone.

For a second, she thinks about trying the heat-sensing technique Lao Ge had told her about the other day. _If you can send a heat pulse out into the room, you can feel for body heat signatures. Use firebending as an extension of your senses._

“I know you’re awake, Rangi.”

Rangi opens her eyes. The sun is blinding after so long in the dark, and she thinks she’s going to be sick. She blinks slowly.

After a moment, the nausea passes.

She’s sitting on grass, her back pressed against a wall of rock. Her wrists and feet are encased in rock, pinned her to the ground.

The surrounding mountain range is familiar enough that Rangi knows instinctively that they’re barely outside of Zigan.

Jianzhu is crouched in front of her, his green and white robes trailing on the ground as he looks at her expectantly. Like she is a child that’s done something wrong, and now he has to fix her mistakes.

Two guards are flanking him. Three against one. 

Jianzhu is getting sloppy.

“You and Kyoshi have made quite the mess here,” Jianzhu says casually as if he’s just discussing Yokoya’s latest crop harvest.

“More or less of a mess than misidentifying the Avatar and spending two years training the wrong person only to get him killed and lose the _real_ Avatar?” Rangi snaps without thinking because Yun was her responsibility and her friend and Jianzhu murdered him.

Jianzhu looks at the ground for a second, before his eyes flash back to her. There’s a dangerous glint in his eyes. A warning. “Tell me Rangi, what did you think of my plan? Do you think Kyoshi ever figured it out?”

Rangi represses a flinch at the mention of Kyoshi. It’s something Jianzhu used to do whenever he came to visit her mother at the Academy and in the early days of their residency in Yokoya. Have her puzzle out his plan, recite it back to him, and critique it accordingly.

Rangi has always been a skilled tactician, and Jianzhu has always been predictable.

“Start with the shirshus. You won’t _believe_ how hard it was to make shirshu spit darts on such short notice. Had a few casualties, but,” Jianzhu shrugs, “needs must.”

That triggers something. Shirshu toxin. Highly potent paralytic. Lasts for at least an hour. Lethal in high doses. But Rangi had hadn’t just been paralyzed, the toxin had rendered her unconscious.

_How much toxin is still in her body?_

Something clicks into place and Rangi inhales sharply. Jianzhu’s eyes widen in delight.

“They weren’t after Kyoshi.” Bile threatens to rush up her throat, and Rangi’s about to pass out again. “Why go to the effort of trying to get Kyoshi's scent when you could easily get mine from my mother? You knew I’d be with Kyoshi.” Where was her mother? Surely she wouldn’t condone this?

Rangi takes a deep breath and feels the rocks shift ever so slightly beneath her hands. It’s shoddy work from an earthbending master. She can easily make a fist beneath the rock. She focuses and feels the skin of her palm heat up, glad she can still bend. She breathes again to steady herself, pulling back the heat in her palm.

Jianzhu doesn’t notice, too enthralled by his apparent success. “But why would I take _you_ in Zigan, Rangi? Kyoshi was right there. If I wanted the Avatar, as you say, I could have her by now.”

She had practiced this with Yun, once. It was a slow day last winter, a light dusting of snow just barely covering the mansion’s training grounds. There weren’t many earthbenders in the Fire Nation, and Rangi had wanted to practice breaking an earthbender’s hold. She had had Yun trap her hands, over and over again, until she could get them out.

Yun had always been an exceptionally good student, and he had implemented the same technique Jianzhu was now using with exceptional precision.

If she had enough space to make a fist, she had enough power to heat the rock until it expanded and fractured.

“Because,” she grits out, “She would never go with you willingly. You already killed Yun and Kelsang. You’re out of leverage.”

Jianzhu laughs. “Rangi, you _are_ my leverage. I don’t know what exactly has gotten into the two of you lately, but as long as I have you, I have Kyoshi.”

“I will _never_ let you get to her,” Rangi sends a blast of heat through her right hand.

The rock cracks under the sudden heat and Rangi pulls her hand free in a single motion.

She swings.

Jianzhu doesn’t have enough time to dodge the hit fully, and the white-hot blast lands on his shoulder. The unexpected hit disorients him, and she uses the time to pull her other hand free.

Rangi’s success doesn’t last. Her mind and body are too slowed by the toxin. One of the guards grabs her around the throat with one hand. He pushes _hard_ , cracking her skull against the solid rock.

Stars erupt across her vision as a loud ringing dominates her ears. Bile rushes up her throat and she fights to swallow it down, breathing heavily as the guard encases her hands again in one swift motion.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have done that,” Jianzhu says furiously, brushing dirt off his robes as the other guard helps him up. “After everything … After _everything, Rangi._ I was going to forgive you. I was going to let you go back to Yokoya. I was going to let you live peacefully in my home, and I was going to give you all of that honor you covet so proudly. But you have violated my trust for the last time.”

Jianzhu yanks her up by her topknot with his unburned arm. The burn is an unnatural red color, blistered and already starting to swell. He yanks her head so she has no choice but to stare in the general direction of his face. Her vision is too blurry from the blow and she can’t manage the full force of her glare. “For your sake, I hope Kyoshi abandons you and I have enough reason to go back to Yokoya and slit your throat. It would be _much_ kinder than what I have planned for you.”

Jianzhu pulls a knife out of his belt, and Rangi swallows as she’s rocked by another wave of nausea. She thinks her head is bleeding. “Your mother is in the infirmary at the mansion trying to survive poison that killed 37 other people,” Jianzhu says, forced casualty spoken through his teeth. “Last I heard, it’s unclear if she’ll make it. Your mother had no reason to be there. It’s a shame you inherited her habit of sticking your nose in business where you don’t belong.”

She can hear exactly what Jianzhu isn’t saying. _Mother has been -_ “You’re a fucking monster,” Rangi spits in his face.

Jianzhu doesn’t even flinch. “You gave me no other options, Rangi. I want you to remember that.”

He glances back at the guard to his left. “Dart her again and take her back to the mansion. Hit her again if she resists. _Do not underestimate her._ I have a separate matter to attend to.” He glances back down at Rangi, dazed and trying to control the mounting panic in her chest. “Goodbye, Rangi. I hope Kyoshi makes the right call. For your sake.”

She screams as the dart hits her neck, the toxin cutting her off almost immediately.

Jianzhu leans over her crumpled body and pulls a knife from his belt. There’s a heavy thrumming in her ears as Jianzhu grips her topknot, pulling it taunt.

She can’t scream. The world is silent around her. She knows what’s coming.

He slices through the thick knot of hair in a single motion.

Jianzhu leaves her folded on the ground, her shorn topknot gripped in his hand.

This time, Rangi welcomes the blackness.

* * *

It is unprecedented for anyone to finish at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls in less than eight years.

Rangi does it in six.

It is a grueling six years. The classes are hard and the training is harder. Her classmates trade rumors about her and her mother in secret like currency.

She changes the way she speaks, losing the coarse up-and-down rhythm of her home island to closer mimic the behavior of her peers in a desperate attempt to blend in. It doesn’t work.

Her father looks at her with sad, understanding eyes as her mother tells her harshly not to rise to the taunts of her classmates.

She joins the Academy’s notorious underground fighting ring, the worst kept secret in the four nations because it is the only place she can fight back. The school doesn’t stop them because the fights support the Academy’s Every one of them is a tool to be sharpened at the Academy and eventually pointed at someone else. They’re coiled energy waiting to spring free. The oldest students take it into their own hands to keep the after-curfew fights going.

In her six years at the Academy, Rangi participates in hundreds of fights. She only loses twice. The first time, she is 9 and ill and the loss grates at her for weeks, pushing her to do better, be better, and not lose again.

She is 13 the second time she loses, and the injustice of it fills her with white-hot rage. Her opponent, a wiry girl two years above her named Shika, cheats.

In an unprecedented move, Rangi challenges Shika to a rematch the next night. She wins in under 30 seconds. A new school record for the fastest victory. Shika spends a week in the infirmary with a nasty concussion.

She knows none of the girls surrounding the ring want her to win, so she vows to never lose again, to become the best possible version of herself.

In six years at school, she never makes a single friend. She doesn’t need any.

She desperately tells herself that she doesn’t want any, either.

But in the evenings when she’s not fighting and the world around her is just a little _too_ quiet and the storm in her head is just a little too loud, she shoves her armor under her bed, pulls the blankets to the top, and sneaks quietly out of her room, down the hallway, out the window and down two stories before moving silently across campus to the Headmistress’s house.

Her mother doesn’t say anything during the nights when she sees Rangi sitting in the back garden with her father even though it’s explicitly forbidden. Hei-Ran doesn’t reprimand Rangi for being there and doesn’t tell her to leave. It’s as close as her mother gets to permission. Her father tells her stories about growing up in the eastern islands and her mother comes outside and sits with them, the two of them listening to the flowing cadence of Junsik’s voice.

Her father makes tea and tells her stories about growing up in a tiny fishing village on the outskirts of the Fire Nation where all the homes are built on stilts, connected by bridges and planks and at the mercy of the river and the spirit that protects it. She’s only visited once when she was ten and her grandfather she’d never met died, but the stories her father tells make it seem like a magical and mystical place, not the quiet fishing town it had been when she visited. He braids her hair some nights, claiming a desperate need to do something with his hands, and Rangi lets him even though she hasn’t worn her hair in a braid in years.

On those nights, Rangi names the stars with her father. She listens to her father’s stories she’s already heard a thousand times before and groans at his bad jokes. On these nights, Rangi thinks everything will be okay, even if school is difficult, even if she doesn’t have any friends, and even if she cries herself to sleep most nights.

She tells herself it doesn’t matter. She graduates in six years instead of the usual eight with a contract officer position in the army secured. Her mother hands her diploma and her father cheers proudly from the audience, and just for a moment, Rangi thinks _maybe it was worth it after all._

Less than a week after she graduates, her loving, vibrant father falls ill.

He does not get better. 

* * *

She’s lying on a floor.

There’s a painful throbbing at the back of her head. With her eyes closed, she tries to figure out her surroundings. Her hands and legs aren’t restrained like she thinks they were earlier (she isn’t sure what happened and the memories aren’t where they should be). She can feel the chill of the floor on her body. Her armor must have been taken at some point.

The concrete floor is cool where her cheek is pressed against it. Her whole body aches.

She feels horrifically nauseous, and it takes her a second to remember Zigan, the shirshu toxin, her head slamming into unforgiving rock, Jianzhu, _Kyoshi._

Her eyes shoot open, and the lights of her prison cell burn harsher than Agni’s rays.

Dread fills her and stars erupt across her vision.

She’s in the prison under the Avatar mansion.

She needs to get out _now._

If Kyoshi’s in danger, she doesn’t have time.

She takes a deep breath. Counts to three.

_Inhale._

_Two._

_Three._

_Four._

She tries to stand but ends up somewhere on her knees, her head pounding as she loses her fight against the sickness creeping up her throat and vomits on the floor of her cell.

The two guards outside her cell notice she’s awake. She’s pulling her hand back to shoot a fire fist at the nearest guard when something strikes her right above her heart. It’s a familiar pinching sensation.

Panic rises in her throat as the toxin takes over.

 _nononononotagainpleasenoKYOSHI_ -

Then-

* * *

When Rangi is ten, her grandfather dies. She never met him.

She stands between her parents on the long boat ride to Jang Hui, a small village located in the middle of a river on one of the easternmost islands of the Fire Nation. Her father points to something she can’t see beyond the horizon and tells her they’re so far east that people used to swim up the river to the Earth Kingdom. Her mother reaches around her to put an arm on his shoulder, and Rangi slinks off to explore the ship as her parents talk quietly, her mother’s hand resting gently on the back of her father’s neck.

She stands between her parents at the funeral, dressed in the stark whites of mourning. Her mother is silent on her right. Her father wipes tears from the corners of his eyes occasionally as his mother recites a eulogy and then a prayer. A sage lights the pyre, and her grandfather goes up in flames.

Her grandfather’s ashes are scattered in the river. While her mother talks to the aunt and cousins she never knew she had, their family with the same dark complexion and slow dialect as her father, her father pulls Rangi aside to fish off of one of the outer piers.

He unrolls the fishing twine from around its wooden pole and attaches the weights. He shows Rangi how to hold it in the water just right, completing the actions with the experience of having done them a thousand times before.

They sit in silence as their lines bob in the flowing river.

Finally, Rangi asks, “Are you sad?”

Her father pulls her into his lap. She’s far too old, to be sitting in her father’s lap sad about the death of a grandfather she only knew from letters, but her father doesn’t mind.

“Death is the end for us all,” He says finally, fishing pole in one hand and stroking his daughter’s hair with the other as Rangi leans against him. “My ma used to say that love is an energy that moves around us. Did you learn about energy in school, little one?”

Rangi makes a face at the nickname, but nods.

“She said that love doesn’t leave this world once the people we love and the people that loved us die. That love is a type of energy that constantly changes and appears in the form of new love. Like when you lose someone, it opens your heart to love in ways you might not expect.” Her father watches the river flow uninterrupted. “I like to think that when we die, the best parts of us go on to the people that need them most. Everyone we’ve ever loved will live on forever, even if it looks different than we might expect it to.”

He presses a kiss to her forehead. “Just like my ma, just like your mom’s sister, he’s not gone. His kindness, his humor, and all the pieces that made him are still in this world, given to the people that need them the most right now.”

Rangi jigs her fishing pole like her father just showed her how to and waits for her mother to join them.

* * *

A hand slaps her across the face and Rangi reaches out instinctively to break it.

“Whoa, _hey!”_ A voice calls. Someone’s tapping the side of her face. Rangi’s eyes open slowly. She’s still on the floor. The world is moving at half speed.

Kirima is kneeling over her, her brow furrowed. Rangi still has a death grip around Kirima’s wrist, and she forces her fingers to unclench.

“Spirits, I’m never waking you up again.” Kirima rubs at her wrist, wincing slightly. “You could stand to be a little nicer. We’re breaking out.”

She blinks. _Is Kirima talking to her?_

Rangi feels something climbing up her throat. She only has a second to shove Kirima violently off of her and twist to the side before she heaves up the nonexistent contents of her stomach. Kirima makes a face.

Rangi tries to stand up, breathing heavily. “Where’s Kyoshi?”

Kirima grabs the back of her head, looking closely at something Rangi can’t see while simultaneously forcing her to stay sitting. “Dealing with the other guy. Stop moving.” She frowns and pulls the water out of her pouch, holding it to Rangi’s head. The water glowed around Kirima’s hands.

Rangi takes a couple of seconds to breathe, trying to settle her spinning head and her stomach. “You let her go alone?” Rangi is about to lose her mind at the thought of Kyoshi facing Jianzhu alone.

Kirima’s eyebrows shot up her forehead. “You should be dead from the amount of _poison_ in your body. A lot less of it killed Lek. If you’re mad that _your_ girlfriend sent us to rescue you, take it up with her. _After_ we get out of here.”

Rangi blinks slowly. “Lek?” _Lek’s dead?_ Oh, spirits. The last thing she ever did was make fun of him. Yun is dead and so is Master Kelsang and so is Lek. Fourteen-year-old, impossibly annoying, impossibly kind _Lek._ Oh –

“Hey!” Kirima snaps in her face. “Later.” She directed her attention to somewhere behind her shoulder. “You two! Time to pull your weight!”

“Sorry, I’m late,” Wong says from the shadows, stepping over the guards from earlier. Their bodies were unmoving on the floor. Wong flexes the new rings on his fingers. “Got a little sidetracked.”

Rangi realizes with a start that Lao Ge is also there, sitting on a chair in the middle of the room and looking as casual as he did at Madame Qiji’s. 

Rangi shifts slightly and Kirima’s hand comes down hard on her shoulder. “I said _stop moving_.”

Wong frowns, arms crossed over his chest. “Did you get knocked in the head?”

Rangi blinks. She can’t quite remember. She remembers Zigan, the darts, Jianzhu, outside the village, and she was relatively certain she’s woken up once or twice since then.

Oh. The rock.

“Yes.”

“You have a concussion,” Kirima says, water still shimmering around her hands. “I can’t – there’s not a lot I can do for it, here.” She moves the water further down, frown deepening. “There’s a lot of toxin in your body. We have to go.” Kirima stows her water and exchanges silent communication with Wong.

Rangi tries to stand again for a second before her knees threaten to buckle underneath her. She hates feeling this weak. She’s hindering her own rescue attempt. “We have to get my mother. She would be in the infirmary. It’s up the stairs that led you here, take…” It was hard to think with her head hurting so much. “Three right turns. Green double doors. Hard to miss. She looks like me. Was poisoned recently.”

“Which of you is bigger?”

Rangi squints, trying to focus enough to figure out why that would matter. “Me. Why?”

Wong and Kirima are looking at each other again. Lao Ge cackles from his perch as something crashed loudly above them. “Ten?”

Kirima rolls her eyes. “Please. I’ll do it in eight.” She takes off at a dead sprint up the stairs.

In one fluid motion, Wong scoops Rangi up in his arms. “Hey!”

“Lao Ge!” Wong calls, ignoring her protests. “We’re leaving. We only have 8 minutes.”

Lao Ge nods, and the three of them take off through the mansion.

Being carried through the hallways of her former home is strange. She should be embarrassed. But the world is still spinning around her, and she almost doesn’t have time to register the fact that there’s no one in the hallways, and that the people who should be running around, cleaning the hallways or preparing for afternoon tea, are bloodied and unmoving in the corridors.

Outside, Lao Ge earthbends them over the wall of the mansion revealing Pengpeng, chewing hay on the other side. Using a single motion, Lao Ge vaults the three of them into Pengpeng’s saddle.

Rangi jostles at the harsh movement, bracing herself against the saddle. Her breathing is coming quickly, all twisted and _wrong_.

Wong is frowning at her again, but she can’t figure out why.

A second later, Kirima and her mother appear in the saddle.

_Her mother-_

Spirits, Rangi might be sick again.

“Hope I grabbed the right one,” Kirima says, looking at Rangi for confirmation. Rangi doesn’t hear the joke, staring intently at the unmoving body in the saddle.

Her mother is lying in front of her, and she is pale and unmoving. Something disgustingly, horrifyingly familiar settles in the pit of Rangi’s stomach, bringing her back to a different body, impossibly pale and unmoving as her mother sobbed outside the hospital room-

Rangi jerks suddenly. Her back hits the saddle. The impact stings. Wong frowns and says something she can’t hear.

Her father is dead. Her mother is dying at the hands of her best friend, at the hands of the man who used to drink sake with her parents when they thought Rangi was asleep, the man who threw Rangi in the air when she was a child and called himself _Uncle Jianzhu_ and captured and poisoned Rangi and _she left Kyoshi alone with him-_

Pengpeng takes off.

Her chest feels too tight. She’s gripping the saddle so hard that her hands are starting to go numb.

“Rangi,” Wong’s looking at her with open concern now. “What’s wrong?”

He’s got his hands up like he’s trying to make himself as nonthreatening as possible, but Rangi’s from the Fire Nation where raised hands mean fire is about to be thrown and she flinches hard.

Rangi swallows. Her throat feels like sandpaper. “It – I don’t- “

“It’s okay,” Wong says again, speaking slowly and softly like he’s speaking to a frightened animal. “It’s okay, Rangi. You’ve been through a lot. You’re probably a little confused. Does something hurt?”

She feels cold.

“That’s okay. I can get you a blanket.”

She didn’t mean to say that out loud.

She looks over the side of the saddle at Yokoya’s harbor. The flow of the water, so similar and so different from Jang Hui.

“Girl,” Lao Ge warns from across the saddle. “Don’t even think about it. We didn’t break you out of prison to fish you out of the ocean ten minutes later.”

There’s something building at the back of her throat.

“Rangi.” She realizes Wong is back. He’s crouched in front of her, blanket in hand. “Why are you crying?”

It takes her longer than it should to realize her eyes are blurry with tears.

Her breathing is quick and stuttered, her chest heaving with the effort.

“It’s okay,” Wong says again, and Rangi can’t figure out if she wants to scream or put her face in her hands and sob because _no, it’s not_.

Her father is dead and so is Yun and Master Kelsang and her mother is dying and _Kyoshi-_

Something is moving, and, oh. Wong has maneuvered them so they both have their backs to the edge of the saddle, Rangi wrapped in the gray blanket Wong had procured. Her head is leaning against Wong’s shoulder.

It’s nice.

Wong holds Rangi’s hand that isn’t gripping the saddle in the space above his heart. His chest is moving in exaggerated breaths.

After a few seconds, Rangi realizes Wong is talking to her.

“Inhale…two…three…four…exhale…two…three…four…” Wong repeats the mantra she’s spent half her life listening to over and over again, never faltering. The cadence of his voice carries as the wind whips around them.

Rangi doesn’t know why she’s crying. All she knows is that she’s started and now she can’t stop and maybe this is how it ends, how first her father and then Yun and then _Lek_ and now her mother meet their ends, how one day everyone becomes just another grey, lifeless body, returned to the earth or scattered to the wind like they were never there in the first place.

_When we die, the best parts of us go on to the people that need them most._

She breathes in time with Wong until her heart stops feeling like it’s about to burst out of her chest and her lungs feel something close to normal.

Her mother’s not dead, and she will not die on Rangi and Kirima’s watch.

Eventually, she closes her eyes, listening to the wind whistle around them and the sound of Wong’s unfaltering voice and feeling the movement of his chest as he breathes.

Unconsciousness takes her again.

* * *

Her father’s funeral is a solemn affair, and Rangi knows instinctively that he would have hated it. It is the exact opposite of how he lived, and the injustice of it all makes her want to scream.

She knows her father would have suffered through it with the air of faint amusement and casual kindness he always did. It makes it so painfully clear that he isn't there anymore.

She is fourteen, fresh out of the academy, and her father is gone.

Her mother stands next to her at the funeral. They both stare straight ahead until it is time to light the pyre, and it reminds Rangi of another funeral four years ago, of her father standing at her side and an afternoon spent fishing off the pier. 

They stand at opposite sides of her wrapped father, her mother at his head, and Rangi at his feet. They watch each other.

Her mother nods, and they light the pyre in time.

Six days after the funeral and only a few hours before sunrise, Rangi lays in the dewy grass of her mother’s backyard, on the campus of the school she spent so long trying to leave and stares at the stars.

Her father had told her about the stars, before. When he told her about how Jang Hui survived on fish, how the ecosystem of the river made it so they never had to travel far to have enough for their village, and how they relied on the stars to find their way. He told her about how one time, a few Water Tribesmen had come through. The men had had different names for the constellations and worshiped the moon, _the bringer of the tides, and calmer of the seas_. The Water Tribesmen steer their ships by way of the stars and relied on them to travel from one pole to the other.

He had pointed to one and said _that one is north. Follow it, and you’ll always find your way home._

The wetness of the grass seeps through the cotton of her nightshirt, and she can’t remember the constellations.

She was lying in bed, unable to sleep, thinking about a story her father had told her once, about one of the constellations they could see in autumn from their backyard. She used to be able to name any star in the sky. But she couldn’t remember this one. It grated at her and made her crawl out of her bed and into the grass hoping for some spark of memory. But there isn’t one. 

The memory is gone, just like her father.

Minutes or hours later, she hears footsteps.

“I suppose it’s no use telling you to go to bed.”

Rangi doesn’t look at her mother. “Probably not.”

After a second she sighs and lies down next to her daughter. It’s so unlike her mother that it startles her for a second.

“You hate the grass. You always say it’s too damp,” Rangi says.

“So do you.”

Her mother is right.

“I can’t remember the constellations. The ones Dad told me about.” Rangi says, and it aches because two weeks ago she could have asked him about them, but she didn’t, and now there are only two of them where there should have been three.

Her mother doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to. Rangi knows her mother feels it too because her father’s shoes are still lined up next to theirs by the door. Because her mother hasn’t been able to sleep in the bedroom that was _theirs_ since he died.

The two of them lay there in silence until the sun has risen far past the horizon.

Rangi goes inside without a word to her mother and sleeps until noon.

She knows they won’t speak of it again.

Sixteen days after her father died, her mother sets her morning tea down on the table and looks at Rangi seriously.

“Jianzhu thinks he’s found the Avatar. He wants me to move to Yokoya to teach him firebending.”

“Oh?” Rangi asks, trying not to choke on her tea. Despite how childish it is, Rangi’s heart thuds in her chest at the thought of losing her mother so soon after her father.

Her mother stared at her, searching. “Yes. He’s from a farming village called Makapu.”

Rangi had never heard of it. She doubted her mother had, either, until Jianzhu had written her. “You’re going to take it.” It’s not a question.

Her mother looks out towards Junsik’s garden for a moment, the tops of his chrysanthemums barely visible. “I am.”

As much as it hurts, Rangi can’t blame her. Her mother will move with Jianzhu and she’ll go back to her contract with the army, and they will pack their lives into boxes and move on like they had never been there at all.

Her father’s memory permeates every crevice of their house. Rangi expects to see him just beyond every corner. She sees the way their father would read scrolls on the back terrace, the way his coat is still slung over the back of their couch and she wonders, just for a second, if her mother also has moments where she forgets that he wasn’t just upstairs or out at work or humming under his breath while he pulled weeds from his garden.

His garden, which neither Rangi nor Hei-Ran knew how to take care of.

“Jianzhu wanted to know if you would be interested in being the Avatar’s bodyguard,” Hei-Ran says at last.

Rangi looks out the window. The plants are dying. It’s nearly winter.

Finally, she says, “I would be honored to serve and protect the Avatar.”

“Good.” Her mother smiles and talks about moving plans, but all Rangi can think about is her father, brushing her hair back on the beaches of their island a lifetime ago.

_It is our duty, our honor, to protect those that cannot protect themselves._

* * *

The crossroads leading into Qinchao are quiet. Unassuming. Their little band of _daofei_ could be anyone in the world, just nomadic travelers pausing for rest under the single branch of an old pine tree.

They’ve been there for hours already. Waiting.

There’s a rusted chain looped around the branch, a testament to the fact that they are not the first ones to seek refuge under this tree. Rangi wonders what it was, once.

Even in her injured state, Rangi had suggested they go after Kyoshi but was promptly shut down by every single member of the Flying Opera Company. They’re huddled together, talking about something Rangi can’t hear. She had wanted to be alone after her breakdown on Pengpeng, so she had sat a little further away, her hands wrapped around her knees.

She pointedly does not think about her mother, wrapped in blankets under the tree.

If she starts thinking about it she won’t be able to stop, so she doesn’t.

The grass blows gently in the wind, just barely disturbing the dirt around it.

“Do you … want me to even that out for you?” A voice asks from behind her.

Rangi turns, blinking against the harsh sunlight. “What?”

“Your,” Kirima gestures to either side of her head, “It’s. Hm. A little uneven.”

Oh.

Her hair.

Rangi pressed her forehead into her knees.

Inhale.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Exhale. 

Two.

Three.

Four.

It’s not that – she couldn’t _forget that._ Couldn’t forget Jianzhu stripping her of her honor, her dignity, in a cheap underhanded move. Publicly disgracing her, for all to see.

Except that she did, for a minute.

A hand pushed her head back from her knees and Kirima stares down at her expectedly.

Rangi can’t meet Kirima’s eyes. “Yes.”

“Great,” Kirima pulls out a pair of scissors. She runs a hand through Rangi’s hair. Rangi suppresses a flinch. “Where do you part it? Side? Middle?”

 _Up._ “Middle.”

Kirima works in silence, methodically moving through the sections of Rangi’s hair. To even it out, Kirima has to cut Rangi’s hair so that it ends just below her chin.

It was halfway down her back, before.

Rangi closes her eyes against a wave of shame, blinking back the tears threatening to spill over.

“I used to cut my sister’s hair, when we were younger,” Kirima says after a while, leaning in to get a certain angle. “She was, oh, eight years younger than me. Her hair grew quickly and was always tangled. Drove me crazy.”

Rangi is quietly grateful for the subject change. “What was she like?”

“Oh, absolutely insane. More energy than anyone else I’ve ever met. Loved papaya and the beach and springtime. We lived in this tiny Earth Kingdom village not far from the Northern Air Temple. My father left right after my sister was born. Mom died when I was 13. It used to feel like it was us against the world.” Kirima sighs. “I fell in with the wrong people just trying to survive. And the Flying Opera Company pulled me out.”

Rangi blinks slowly and doesn’t comment on Kirima’s use of the past tense.

Kirima hesitates. “Listen, I’m not going to sit here and try to justify what Hark and Jesa did to Kyoshi. I can’t imagine how you must feel. But I spent six years with them. The whole time, they walked around with … this grief, I guess.”

“What do you mean?” Whatever she had anticipated, it wasn’t this.

“In six years, I never once saw Jesa airbend. Hark avoided his reflection like it could kill him. They never once talked about any of _this_ happily. It was like they were doing it out of necessity. We would have campfires and they would just sit silently in the corner. They made sure we knew not to glorify this life.” Kirima hesitates again. “Jesa made Lek soup whenever he was sick. Kyoshi … her story was hard to hear. It seemed unlike them. But it’s not fair that they made a bad call and Kyoshi paid the price. And for what it’s worth, I’m glad you two are here. Even if you are breaking at least five different fraternization rules.”

Rangi wants to be angry at them, angry at these dead people she doesn’t know who abandoned Kyoshi, _Kyoshi,_ like she was nothing, her parents, who made her reluctant to trust and who told her love was conditional.

But Rangi’s not angry. She’s sad. 

Sad for their daughter who desperately wanted and _needed_ her parents to be there for her. And sad for her parents, who made the absolute worst mistake of their lives by deciding they wouldn’t keep her.

“What did you do with Lek?” Rangi asks, because not knowing is worse.

Kirima smiles sadly. “Buried in a field far away from any possible law abiders. The Desert People don’t have grave markers, so Lek doesn’t have one. He used to say that the simple embrace of the land was the only honor worthy of the departing.”

Rangi closes her eyes. Breathes. “My dad used to say that when we die, the best parts of us live on in the people who need it most.” She thinks of Lek in the marketplace, his big eyes, brilliant ideas, and broad, sweeping hand motions. The single best precision bending she’s seen in her life. “He would probably say that everyone lives on forever in some form of energy, even if it looks different than we expect.”

Kirima considers it for a moment. “He sounds like a good guy.”

Rangi thinks of warm hands grasped around a fishing pole on a rotting dock in the eastern Fire Islands, the sound of her father watering the plants in his garden, and watching her dad spin her mother around the kitchen on their last wedding anniversary, the week before he got sick.

Hokuto. The name of the constellation she couldn’t remember. _Look north and find your way home._

“He was.”

Just as midafternoon threatens to give way to early evening, a familiar giant adorned in green crests over the hill.

Rangi’s on her feet in an instant, barreling blindly towards her.

Kyoshi braces for impact, immovable as ever, as Rangi bounds into her at full speed. 

Rangi slips her hands around Kyoshi’s waist, pulling herself impossibly close to her.

She takes a deep breath from where her face is pressed into Kyoshi’s armor, inhales the scent of sweat and dirt and she feels like she can finally exhale for the first time since everything went so horrifically wrong yesterday.

Kyoshi’s hands snake around Rangi immediately, gripping her tightly. They both need this assurance that the other is there. The embrace feels like an _it’s okay, I’m here, there’s nothing we can’t do together_ all tied into one. Kyoshi holds the pieces of Rangi together to keep her from breaking apart _._ Kyoshi rests her head on top of Rangi’s shorn, honorless head, and asks, “Are you okay?”

Rangi’s breath hitches as something dangerously close to a sob catches in her throat. Kyoshi’s arms tighten around her slightly, and Kyoshi guides both of them to the ground as sobs rack Rangi’s body.

The sobs threaten to rip her in half as all the stress from the past day comes out in waves.

It’s nothing like the time she cried on Kyoshi in the South Pole, that first time they shared a tent what feels like lifetimes ago. Those times had been quick, necessary emotional releases. Quiet moments in the dark that would go unmentioned.

But now Rangi feels like she’s been broken open, and all of the feelings she’s pushed down for years have finally seen daylight and were now pouring out of her and demanding to be felt, forcing Rangi to weather the storm of her own emotions.

Kyoshi doesn’t whisper false platitudes or tell her everything is going to be okay. She gives Rangi all the time she needs and holds Rangi as she rocks back and forth and kisses her head. 

Rangi can barely tell Kyoshi what happened to her mother.

_I left her, and she’s dying because I wasn’t there._

“I swear she’ll be alright,” Kyoshi promises. She strokes Rangi’s cropped hair comfortingly with her hand, gently rocking back and forth. “We’ll do whatever it takes to heal her. Trust me. We’ll find the best healers the world has to offer. If we have to, we’ll go to the North Pole. I _promise_.” Kyoshi presses another kiss to her forehead

Rangi doesn’t know how long they spend sitting here, Rangi curled against Kyoshi’s chest, but eventually Rangi’s sobs quiet. The world feels a little less like it’s actively collapsing around her.

Their friends come over and tell a highly elaborated version of Rangi’s prison breakout (because the Flying Opera Company is _theirs_ , because Wong had carried her and Kirima had cut her hair and told her _you’re ours because you’re with Kyoshi and Kyoshi’s with us_ , and Rangi owes this chaotic band of criminals her life).

The entire time, Rangi is still wrapped up in Kyoshi, Kyoshi’s arm slung around her front and pulling her close so Rangi is sitting nearly on top of her, Rangi’s head tucked under Kyoshi’s chin.

Neither of them is okay but they are _together_ , and that means something.

Jianzhu is dead, but her mother is alive.

So is Yun. They have work to do.

As Kirima talks about fighting off the infirmary nurses, Rangi looks around, thinking back over Kyoshi’s words.

_We’ll do whatever it takes. Trust me._

Rangi does.

**Author's Note:**

> **Edited 2/13/2021 to fix two minor spelling mistakes and update content warning 
> 
> Detailed content warning:  
> -A big premise of this fic is that Rangi keeps falling unconscious because the guards keep hitting her with the shirshu spit darts. Since the darts are paralytic and they're being used with the intent to cause harm, I'm pretty sure it counts as torture.  
> -It's mentioned that Rangi has panic attacks throughout the fic. Rangi has one (that's also brought on by the poison) on the back of Pengpeng after they leave the mansion in Yokoya.  
> -Junsik features quite heavily in this fic. There are no graphic descriptions of dead bodies. Two different people are cremated via firebending. Junsik dies of an illness which I intentionally left very vague. He dies off-page, but the aftermath is talked about.  
> -While trying to fight Jianzhu, Rangi hits him with a fire blast and burns him. There's a sentence about the color and appearance of the burn  
> -Rangi gets intentionally concussed after she tries to fight off Jianzhu and his guards. The guard smashes her head against a rock and there is a mention of possible bleeding  
> -As a side effect of being concussed, she is nauseous and throws up twice in this fic (once in the cell by herself and once when Kirima comes in)  
> 
> 
> thank you so much for reading!! title is from "I Know The End" by Phoebe Bridgers. many liberties were taken with this fic. I honestly wasn't sure if I was going to post this today (or ever, since I'm still not 100% happy with it), but election day in the us drained my life force and a lot of things feel a little too now-or-never, so I decided to edit and post this. to my fellow americans: there's more work left to do. black lives matter. I made a donation yesterday to my local bail fund and I encourage you to do the same if you are able. 
> 
> come find me on tumblr where I'm always thinking respectfully about rangi and kyoshi's height difference https://frutescence.tumblr.com


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